Outdoor Adventurer Living in Vancouver, BC

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Trip date: July 15, 2017 Whether you’re looking for something short & sweet or long & demanding, Manning Park has trails of all levels for park users to choose from. Ryan & I recently planned to hike a marathon distance day trip and the most obvious choice that would cover the mileage, provide motivating views, and allow an easy-to-travel trail bed was the Heather trail in Manning Park. Some days I have to dig deep and some days I find it effortless to move in the mountains. This…

The above picture was taken from: http://bctvkootenays.com/2017/06/28/fire-crews-still-battling-lightning-caused-fires-in-arrow-fire-zone-after-mondays-storm/ This post is not directed towards the average outdoors enthusiast – the ones who are respectful of the environment, plan ahead, follow the rules, and are not oblivious to their surroundings. It is intended for those who caused or contributed to what is already the worst wildfire season this Province has seen. And we have one more long weekend to get through. Dear Outdoor User: You naively parked in tall dry grass, set up your camp site, started a fire, lit and…

Women in the Outdoors Almost two years ago, towards the end of 2015, I had wrapped up my first sport sociology course. I wrote an academic paper, Women Participation in Outdoor Recreation, and felt unbelievably empowered to change the world’s perspective on women in the outdoors through an elaborate blog post. Needless to say, there are a few issues with how women are perceived in wilderness recreation settings.

Trip date: July 9, 2017 There’s something special about exploring new places. Rather than keeping a steady rhythm, it forces you to change your pace, position, and expectations. This has to be good for the soul. We’re new to the Eastgate area and haven’t spent much time east of Manning Park. A few of us decided to check out Flat Top Mountain during wildflower season. The trip was on our radar, and moved up in priority due to recent condition updates. There are a few ways to approach…

Trip date: May 22, 2017 Ahh May, the rest stop before summer. This is about the time we start embracing the sun, anticipating the summer months, and planning out & preparing for new adventures. We had plans for the long weekend, none of which panned out because Ryan & I ended up fighting a cold. By Monday, we were eager to get out, and decided to check out the Mosquito Creek cascades in North Vancouver.

Back to the Basics: Why I Hike I’ve got a simple one-liner to explain why I hike, but first I’ll get into the background story as to why the thought even crossed my mind lately. Ryan and I were in the North Shore mountains this weekend. We explored the full Dreamweaver trail (details coming soon); between the first 2km and the last 2km of trail, we didn’t see a single soul. Let me elaborate, it was a gorgeous, hot, sunny day in a popular area, and we didn’t…

Trip date: April 2, 2017 Spring gives us the unique chance to participate in winter and summer activities at the same time; if we feel like skiing or snow-camping, we can, and if we feel like avoiding the snow and indulging in some greenery, we can. When the weather starts to warm things up, the valley floor is the first thing to clear and local waterfalls usually start working their magic, tempting us to leave the snow behind. The Four Cascades Loop (from Lyle Litzenberger’s Burke and Widgeon…

It’s that time of year again, when we choose the most perfect moments and reflect on them, hold on to them, to validate to ourselves that they were something special. We choose these memories because they are the way things should have been, would have been, had it not been for, well, life. In these snapshots, the moments are unwarped and golden. The views and sensations are in fine detail: wildflowers dancing in the breeze, rainfall streaming down my face, legs overrun by a burning sensation from pushing…

Last updated: December 14, 2017 Trip Planning Resources Please note: newly added links are in bold font below. Everyone has their own method to the madness of trip planning – some plan extensively, some don’t see the value in planning, and some may not know how or where to start. There is an abundance of information available online to help you decide where to go, when to go, how to pack, and more. I can’t comment on the accuracy of the sites out there, but I do have…

Favourite Quote

“You can’t stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this – what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There’s an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”